The growth and competition in the casino gaming market in recent years and the increasingly sophisticated and complex technology being integrated into the gaming environment, presents both challenges and opportunities to gaming establishment operators. Over recent years, casino revenue has dramatically increased in the area of non-gaming revenue sources such as, hotel and hospitality, retail, dining, entertainment and other casino products or services. Traditionally, patron tracking systems have focused on tracking patrons of electronic gaming machines, table games and other gaming revenue areas such as, bingo and keno. In this traditional scenario, a patron is identified during gaming play by a patron tracking ID card and/or a patron identification number (PIN). The patron tracking system tracks the patron's gaming play and may award patron tracking points, bonuses, and other incentives according to established criteria to promote continued patron loyalty. Known casino management systems include player tracking devices that are connected to gaming machines. The player tracking devices require players to insert player identification cards that include player account numbers encoded on magnetic strips. The player tracking devices include magnetic strip card readers that read the encoded player account number from the magnetic strip to allow the player to access the corresponding player tracking account.
At least some known magnetic strip card readers may be vulnerable to security risks that include tampering using a card skimming device that is placed over the magnetic strip card reader and is used to record the information encoded in the magnetic strip of the player identification card. Because these card skimming devices are placed over existing magnetic strip card readers, a player may unknowingly insert the player card through the skimming device when attempting to insert the player card into the magnetic strip card readers of the gaming machine, thus allowing the skimming device to record the player account number associated with the player's player tracking account. The persons intent on stealing personal information about the player may then remove the skimming device, obtain the player account numbers recorded by the card skimming device, and access player tracking accounts using the stolen player account numbers.
In addition, some players do not wish to carry around a player tracking card while the player is in the casino environment.
Accordingly, systems are needed to improve the data security of existing casino management systems.
The present invention is aimed at one or more of the problem as set forth above.